The Beginning of the March to War in Iraq, Eleven Years Later

Eleven years ago today, the U.S. government publicly began marching towards war with Iraq when President Bush gave his State of the Union address in which he made this statement:

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.

It is instructive to return to this appalling speech from time to time to remember how it was that the U.S. was led into the debacle in Iraq. It is important to note that the core claims in this speech were nonsense, and were recognized as such by some people at the time. The so-called “axis” was no axis at all. The Iraqi and Iranian regimes were mortal foes, and their interests were as divergent as they possibly could have been. The sole reason for including them together was to maximize the public’s fear and to conjure up bogus comparisons with the Axis powers.

One of the main pro-war arguments in the months before the invasion relied heavily on the idea that Iraq had “terrorist allies” and that it would hand over its alleged WMDs to them, but neither claim was valid. As it turned out, Iraq had no WMDs to give to anyone. If it had possessed these weapons, there is no reason to believe that a regime that had gone to enormous expense to build such things would give them away to a third party that could use them for its own purposes. The supposed connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq was simply made-up. The terrorist-with-WMDs scenario was particularly important for advocates of the invasion, because it was the only way that they could get around the reality that the U.S. and its allies could rely on traditional deterrence for their security.

As we learned in the years that followed, the cost of preventive war was quite high in lives and wealth, and all of the costs of the Iraq war were incurred in an entirely unnecessary and avoidable conflict. Had the U.S. been more “indifferent” and less intent on waging preventive war, many thousands of Americans and 100,000+ Iraqis would not have perished in the conflict. I hope never again to see our country embrace such a disastrous policy.

WIA’s point is well taken. CBS News had a story tonight about a quadruple amputee soldier from an IED in 2009 who has recently had a double arm transplant. How many such casualties are among us that we never think of. To say nothing of those suffering from
PTSD, depression, alcoholism and drug addiction. It grieves me to remember that I once supported these wars, until a liberating if late encounter with “The Irrepressible Murray Rothbard.”

Aside from direct apologies for errant munitions (collateral damage), I can’t imagine a rarer beast than a shred of reflection or pause given to the 100k Iraqi dead by the administration that launched the war.

The luminaries and lightweights ready to do something similar can’t possibly have given any weight to these lives. The disconnect must be complete for their rhetoric to be so fatuous.

What a depressing time. The US lost it’s mind for a while. The talking heads and neocons propagandized us into a pointless war of choice. I compare the US to an irrational angry child, after 9/11, willing to lash out at any target, regardless of anything. Simply to inflict pain on some hapless country. The leaders knew that Iraq was no threat to the US but they cynically sold the WMD lies to further their own “protect Israel” at all costs agenda.

I am a Republican, marginally, but I am still outraged at GOP behavior during that time. I detest Obama but voting for McCain in 2008 was not possible for me.

The Iraq war also destroyed the GOP for a generation. Domestic spending during the Bush years (the official GOP scapegoat) was nothing compared to the increases in defense spending. The establishment of a sprawling security state and a brash disregard for the law, things which are inevitably part of a country at war, have driven privacy-minded people from the GOP. Collusion between Treasury and the Fed during Bush’s tenure – keeping interest rates low to make credit available – is a perfect example of modern-day bread and circus designed to distract the voting public from the disaster abroad. There’s no doubt in my mind that Bush could have served two terms and another GOP politician could have won in 2008 if the Iraq war, and the multitude of erroneous policies in support of, had not happened.

And the worst part is that, according to the GOP, all these things are “good” or at least defensible. I hope they like being out of power, because until they disavow these things, that’s where the GOP is going to be.

And the people who brought you Iraq, The Sequel! have learned nothing, and are trying to do it again.

Or perhaps they did learn something. Perhaps they learned that you can be (partly) responsible for a monstrous clusterf*ck and suffer essentially no consequences. So why not do it again? I mean, it’s not as if they actually care about the damage done (it certainly won’t effect them). Eggs and omelettes and all that, what what. What’s a few hundred thousand dead and more maimed in comparison to spreading Freeeeeeeedum?

Thank you Daniel. While we are glad to trumpet our historical successes, we far too often fail to look at our failures…which is why we are too quick to repeat them.

Even to this day, there are probably about 30% of our fellow citizens who would find this piece, at best surprising, and at worst, revisionist history. But this is exactly why it can’t be repeated loud or often enough: Iraq was a foreign policy debacle of dramatic proportions. Whether one views it as the apex of bureaucratic incompetence, or an amalgam of lies, or both, it must never be forgotten and never repeated.

In 1998, Richard Perle and other core members of the PNAC – Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, and John Bolton, were among the signers of a letter to President Clinton calling for the removal of Hussein.

Well, Bush nearly accidentaly made the unification of Europe real, but stopped a bit short of turning the US into the “dangerous external enemy” needed to convince Europeans to give more power to the EU.

Apart from that, Saddam had “some” intel conection to Al-Quaida, as he was indeed spying on them and trying to infiltrate them. Oh my gosh, he wants to spy on Al-Quaida! Destroy him!!!

I also read that information gained by “enchanced interrogation methods” apperantly played a role in convincing some people, I can imagine the weird situation of the tortured Al-Quaida operative “I need absolutly no additional incentive to frame my mortal enemy Saddamm Hussein for anything from the Kennedy assassination to swine flue, you dont need to waterboar *gulp*”.

One actual outcome of the axis of evil rararara was that Iran and North korea found out that they had common threats, jointly decided to completly disregard the incompatibitly of “communism” and Islam, and became the bestest friends ever.

North korean advisors indeed had some important things to say on the subject of tunnel warfare, conventional-irregular hybrid war doctrine and certain aspects of rocketry, things that Hezbollah put to good use in 2006.